Abstract

Background

Since the early 1990s there has been a burgeoning interest in global health teaching
in undergraduate medical curricula. In this article we trace the evolution of this
teaching and present recommendations for how the discipline might develop in future
years.

Discussion

Undergraduate global health teaching has seen a marked growth over the past ten years,
partly as a response to student demand and partly due to increasing globalization,
cross-border movement of pathogens and international migration of health care workers.
This teaching has many different strands and types in terms of topic focus, disciplinary
background, the point in medical studies in which it is taught and whether it is compulsory
or optional.

We carried out a survey of medical schools across the world in an effort to analyse
their teaching of global health. Results indicate that this teaching is rising in
prominence, particularly through global health elective/exchange programmes and increasing
teaching of subjects such as globalization and health and international comparison
of health systems. Our findings indicate that global health teaching is moving away
from its previous focus on tropical medicine towards issues of more global relevance.

We suggest that there are three types of doctor who may wish to work in global health
– the ‘globalised doctor’, ‘humanitarian doctor’ and ‘policy doctor’ – and that each
of these three types will require different teaching in order to meet the required
competencies. This teaching needs to be inserted into medical curricula in different
ways, notably into core curricula, a special overseas doctor track, optional student
selected components, elective programmes, optional intercalated degrees and postgraduate
study.

Summary

We argue that teaching of global health in undergraduate medical curricula must respond
to changing understandings of the term global health. In particular it must be taught
from the perspective of more disciplines than just biomedicine, in order to reflect
the social, political and economic causes of ill health. In this way global health
can provide valuable training for all doctors, whether they choose to remain in their
countries of origin or work abroad.